Product Description

Do you want to learn C#? Programmers around the world have learned that C# lets them design great-looking programs and build them fast. With C#, you ve got a powerful programming language and a valuable tool at your fingertips. And with the Visual Studio IDE, you ll never have to spend hours writing obscure code just to get a button working. C#, Visual Studio and .NET take care of the grunt-work, and let you focus on the interesting parts of getting your programs written. Sound appealing?

Unlike other C# books, which just show you examples and expect you to just memorize them and move on, Head First C# gets you writing code from the beginning. You're given the tools you need, and then you're guided through fun and engaging programming projects. You'll build programs to play a card game, explore a house, and help lazy programmers manage their sick day excuses. But it's not all fun and games: you'll build business applications too, like a contact database and a program to help a party planner estimate her dinner parties. You'll build a dungeon role-playing game and a fully animated, colorful simulation of a beehive. And by the end of the book, you'll build a fast-paced, full-featured retro Invaders arcade game.

Make no mistake: by the time you're done with Head First C#, you'll be able to build full-scale, complex, and highly visual programs. And you'll have all of the C# tools you need to tackle almost any programming problem that comes your way.

Head First C# is built for your brain, using the revolutionary approach that was pioneered by the highly acclaimed and popular Head First series. You'll never get that bored, "eyes glazed over" feeling from Head First C#, because it guides you through one challenging project after another until, by the end of the book, you're a C# rock star!

Here's what you'll learn:

• Core C# programming concepts
• How to use the Visual Studio 2008 IDE to build, debug and run your programs
• Important .NET 3.5 features, including generic collections, Windows forms, GDI+ graphics, streams, serialization and more
• Using object oriented programming concepts to help you build well-designed programs
• How to build robust applications with good error handling
• The latest C# 3.0 features, including LINQ, object and collection initializers, automatic properties, extension methods and more

Throughout the book, you'll confront and conquer advanced C# concepts. Some of the most mysterious ideas are demystified and explained with clear examples: how Unicode works, events and delegates, references versus value types, the stack versus the heap, what's really going on with garbage collection, and more.

Thousands of readers have learned C# using this innovative book, including:

• Beginning programmers who want to learn programming from the ground up
• More advanced programmers who are proficient in another language (like Visual Basic, Java, SQL, FoxPro) and want to add C# to their toolbox
• Programmers who understand basic C# syntax, but are still looking to get a handle on how objects work
• Anyone who's tried to learn C#, but had to deal with books full of dull examples and nothing but boring console applications
• Lots of people who just want to learn how to build cool games!

Head First C# is built to work with any version of Visual Studio 2008, including the free express edition. (It can also can be used with any version of Visual Studio 2005.)

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49286 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 778 pages

About the Author
Jennifer Greene studied philosophy in college but, like everyone else in the field, couldn't find a job doing it. Luckily, she's a great software tester, so she started out doing it at an online service, and that's the first time she got a good sense of what project management was. She moved to New York in 1998 to test software at a financial software company. She managed a team of testers at a really cool startup that did artificial intelligence and natural language processing. Since then, she's managed large teams of programmers, testers, designers, architects, and other engineers on lots of projects, and she's done a whole bunch of procurement management. She loves traveling, watching Bollywood movies, drinking carloads of carbonated beverages, and owing a whippet. For more information about Jennifer, Andrew Stellman, and their books, visit http://www.stellman-greene.com.

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Customer Reviews

A guidebook to learning, not a reference manual
I've read enough books on programming to know what to expect before I even open the cover: intro, jargon definitions, syntax definitions (that gets you about 50% through the book), n-chapters with explanations/examples of major features, a chapter with stuff that didn't fit anywhere else, The End. A bit like learning to speak a foreign language by reading the dictionary and then reading a book on grammar: dry and completely backwards.

Head First C# takes a much more effective approach. From the start you are using what you learn and building upon that base with successive lessons. New concepts are introduced and explained when you have the necessary context to understand them. Examples are not snippets of code in isolation. And praise the heavens, none involve the worn-out Employer/Employee, Customer/Order/Address class cliches. The final project is a Space Invaders clone... code you might actually enjoy writing. What a novel idea.

If I had any complaint it's that the visual style is a bit busy. Mostly because I'm used to reading reference manuals, but I guess the style is what "kids" like these days. I certainly would have preferred a book like this when I was new to the programming game. The lighthearted approach of the does not sacrifice a depth of understanding. Buy this book and a C# reference manual. Learn with this one, and look up the fine points in the other.

C# for the person who doesn't already know C#
Having just completed the first section of the book, I would like to update my comments.

I say completed rather than "finished reading" because this book really is a series of very hands-on mini tutorials that build upon each other to give the complete novice first a solid, lasting and applicable grounding in programming concepts, increasing in complexity (though only at a rate which the book has ensured that ANY reader can follow) until finally the novice has become a confident, self-reliant C# programmer able to apply his/her skill to any programming assignment.

Not a reference book by any means, rather a VERY cheap course where the coach is personal, black on white on paper and has to be read at your own speed of understanding and assimilation rather than bearded, sweaty, overpaid and having to be listened to. The order of teaching is precise, giving you what you need at the right time rather than resorting to the all too familiar "but we will cover that later, in chapter 724" and the pace is pitch perfect leaving no-one behind, bringing the reader's attention back to things covered in previous chapters so that he/she is sure to have committed the processes but also the jargon to memory with regular revision activities such as crosswords and puzzles.

This is the first book on C# that I have found that doesn't explain jargon with more jargon. Instead, it gives you similes, comparisons, metaphors from common human experience which help the reader understand how various elements of the programming language work.

One third of the way through it I have already learned more than my £3000 course with a well marketed IT training body *cough-skillstrain-don't-do-it-to-yourself-cough* has been able to teach me in a quarter of the time .

Five star with no hesitation.

So far very impressive
Look this style is going to scare some people... it looks like a school workbook from when I was ten....well perhaps the first draft copy! It's full of pictures, and "hand drawn" arrows scrabbling over the pictures. There's plenty of 1950s stock photos with humourous speech balloons...it's very busy and I can well understand someone thinking that it's all too much.

But what do you get in chapter one? You only set up a contact management program linked to a database which you then turn into an executable file with a full installation package! Yeah, chapter one- and it worked, the standalone program is sitting on my start menu!

Good grief most dull and dusty tomes lead you gently through the inevitable hello worlds, do a bit of maths operators and if you survive to chapter 25 in the solid tome Microsoft® Visual C#® 2008 Step by Step (PRO- Step by Step Developer) ...THEN you get to play with databases.

Yes I am just on chapter two- so it may be a bit early to judge, but all those scrabbly arrows have finally sorted out in my mind the hierarchy of namespace..class..method.....oh right, THAT'S why you suddenly see the words public "partial" class in code....enlightenment.

I want to learn C# as a raw prawn beginner. This book is finally getting me there- the dull and dusty books will reinforce what I've learned later-but this has an energy and an intelligence which is sadly missing from the books I've tried so far.